Memoirs and morsels from home and abroad

Egyptian takeout

I started a new job a little over a month ago, and with less time for cooking, I have been relegated to picking up soup almost every day from Milk Street Cafe, conveniently located across the street from my office. At first it was a treat, buying lunch every day, but as I’m adapting to my job, enough is enough. I like to know what’s in my food and I like my way of spicing things. And I like spice!

My lunch requirements are pretty simple. Warm (especially these days). Filling. A good mix of protein and carbs. But not too heavy to leave me sleepy.

This weekend, I finally recreated the koshary that I tried in Egypt about 2 months ago, and have found it to be a perfect pack-up-and-go lunch of comfort. This makes sense because koshary is a very inexpensive, ubiquitous, vegetarian street food. To get authentic koshary, I asked my tour guide to take me to one of the hole-in-the-wall koshary establishments. She suggested that the driver pick some up for me while I was at the Egypt museum, but I insisted on going to pick it up myself. Little did my tour guide know that I was hoping to ask for the recipe.

After the museum, I hopped back into the tour bus and reminded my tour guide that I wanted to get koshary. “Are you sure you really want to get it yourself?” she asked. Again. I tried to explain that I like cooking and wanted to take pictures as the driver left the main highway and turned onto narrower and narrower streets lined with parked cars and pedestrians. Eventually the driver pulled over onto the sidewalk and the tour guide walked me past the takeout window and into the restaurant.

The tour guide led me into the small restaurant lined wall-to-wall with customers. We joined the line in front of the register and I paid 5 Egyptian pounds (less than a dollar) for my lunch. I took my ticket about 6 feet over to the right to the cooking and serving station and picked up my lunch. I then asked the tour guide to help me inquire about the recipe. But she just wanted to get out and continue on our tour. So, I settled for a few pictures and left without my recipe. We were in and out in less than 5 minutes.

We hustled back to the bus and I settled down to eat my lunch.

The bus lurched to a start as I opened up the packages. The larger one contained pasta (a slightly bizarre mix of short spaghetti, a lentil and tomato sauce (with a few chickpeas thrown in), and covered with fried onions. The smaller one tasted like white vinegar with salt and pepper.

About 20 minutes later, and almost at the bottom of my koshary, we arrived at the pyramids at Giza.

Koshary-esque

This recipe is my attempt to recreate the koshary that I tried. Its not necessarily authentic but it tastes great. My adaptation eliminates chickpeas and fried onions tossed on top. But I could not neglect the splash of vinegar at the end. This is great served fresh or packed up for lunch the next day. You do need to plan this recipe a bit in advance as the lentils need to be soaked for 8 hours before cooking.

- 1 C French (de Puy) lentils, uncooked

- 2-3 T olive oil

- 2 medium onions

- 2 T cumin

- 1 T coriander

- 1-2 t cayenne pepper

- 2 t sumac

- 1 28-oz can chopped tomatoes

- short noodles, e.g., broken angel hair, macaroni, or ditalini

- white vinegar

Prepare lentils. Soak lentils 8-hours or overnight in more than enough water to cover. The water will turn a reddish brown. Drain and rinse, and then bring to a boil in a large pot of water. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Even though de Puy lentils are less likely than brown lentils to become mushy, you still don’t want to overcook.

Make sauce. Chop onions and saute in olive oil. Add spices and continue to cook until fragrant. Add tomatoes and simmer for 15 minutes, adding lentils after the first 5 minutes.

Boil. Make pasta according to the package directions.

Assemble dish. Fill bowl halfway with pasta and top with the same amount of lentil sauce. Toss on a splash of vinegar.

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3 Responses

Several years ago, I traveled to Cairo for several days as part of a longer trip. The travel plans included a weekend to enable some free time to adjust for time zone changes on a multiple stop trip that was way too ambitious. A challenge of traveling to parts of the world with such exotic and ancient history is maximizing the opportunities to experience the environment.

I recall talking a tour with a guide using his car. On the way back from the pyramids we stopped by a small restaurant lined wall-to-wall with customers. The picture of the white container with the “Koshary & Sweets” label reminded me of the trip and the afternoon snack. I also remembered the “interesting” appearance of the contents and the how good it tasted on that hot afternoon.

While I thought of the snack as fast food, I did not know that it was also slow prep with lentils needing 8 hours of soaking before cooking. I am looking forward to trying the recreated version described with some advanced planning!

Yeah! So you finally got around to making koshary, wish I had been there with you. I think together we could have wheedled a recipe out of them :-) well perhaps not, as I know only a handful of Arabic words.

About

Hi! I'm Gayle, and here I use my Hebrew name Zahavah. I work front of house in a restaurant where I'm learning the hospitality industry from the ground up. Up until a year ago, I was a health care consultant. Also, I have an MD. Go figure! Thanks for dropping by and joining the conversation.

koshercamembert@gmail.com

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